James McTeigue Talks Superman & Magneto

At the end of July, Robert Sanchez at IESB broke the news that Warner Brothers were looking at James McTeigue to possibly direct a new Superman feature film that would act as a franchise reboot.

A few weeks later, McTeigue sat with MTV and while not confirming or denying any involvement, he did relay his idea of a reboot for Superman should he land the gig. His plan would take the Man of Steel in a different direction and skip through the overdone origins of Clark growing up into the hero we know him as.

Things were looking good for our favorite Kryptonian, up until Diane Nelson, the head of the newly formed DC Entertainment, explained that they do not have another Superman film as part of their current plans.

Was she just saying that just in case they don’t sort out their legal troubles with the heirs to the Superman creators and lose the rights to many of the original aspects of the character? Are they really not planning another Superman movie?

Obviously, they’re thinking about it with the production start deadline approaching in 2011. And it’s sure thing, WB will do everything in their power to get it all sorted out and regain full control of their poster boy character.

With DC Entertainment potentially set to launch an interconnected DC film universe of their own, starting with Green Lantern, to compete with that of Marvel Studios (and even of Fox’s X-Universe), they’re going to need their #1 hero.

If it does go forward, I think McTeigue and the Wachowskis (rumored to produce) would make for an interesting team to helm the project. On the topic of McTeigue and his ideas, Alex Billington at First Showing had a chance to chat with the Ninja Assassin director and they touched on the Superman project and his ideas for it.

“I think I would be interested in doing it if they let me do it the way I wanted to do it. I would say that, if you take the Richard Donner Supermans and the last Superman [from Bryan Singer], I think that Superman is probably ripe for a bit of a change up. I think society has changed around the core idea of what Superman was.”

“And I’m not saying you do the ubiquitous dark Superman, I’m not saying that… I’m just saying that I think there are some things that you could excise from the Superman mythology that people would get into it, if you took the world that he was in and changed that a bit, and maybe even project that into the future a bit. I think you don’t really have to play into the origin story anymore. I think there’s a whole bunch of things you could do to make that film more alive and exciting again.”

I’m glad he quickly tossed down this whole “dark superman” thing, as did Brandon Routh back when he was still likely to return. We don’t need that, we just need a new and fresh take on the character sans Lex Luthor and the history of the Kent family.

In his article, Alex mentioned the popular Red Son Mark Millar limited series which followed an alternate take on Superman where he landed as a child in Soviet Russia (the Ukraine to be specific) instead of Smallville, Kansas. That sure as hell would be an interesting movie, but that’s not what we’ll be seeing on screen the next time we see the Man of Steel.

With the future of Supes still seemingly up in the air, we’ll have to wait and see what happens between Warner Brothers/DC Entertainment and the heirs of Superman creators, Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster.

Moving on to that other big Comics brand name, Marvel, McTeigue has also been rumored to direct Fox Studios’ in-development X-Men Origins: Magneto film, a project that has David Goyer (The Dark Knight writer, Blade: Trinity director, FlashForward creator) attached. On that subject, McTeigue shot down the baseless rumors, confirming what we already know.

“I think David Goyer would probably be surprised about that, actually. I think that’s just one of those rumors that kind of starts… Until he drops out!

McTeigue did say he’d definitely do it if given the opportunity but it looks like the job might be already filled and McTeigue may be busy on other things anyway… like Superman: Man of Steel for instance!

Would you like to see a McTeigue-directed Superman reboot in the next few years? How about the idea of a shared continuity with the DC films like we’re seeing with Marvel?